Working Paper: NBER ID: w14923
Authors: Changtai Hsieh; Edward Miguel; Daniel Ortega; Francisco Rodriguez
Abstract: In 2004, the Chávez regime in Venezuela distributed the list of several million voters whom had attempted to remove him from office throughout the government bureaucracy, allegedly to identify and punish these voters. We match the list of petition signers distributed by the government to household survey respondents to measure the economic effects of being identified as a Chavez political opponent. We find that voters who were identified as Chavez opponents experienced a 5 percent drop in earnings and a 1.5 percentage point drop in employment rates after the voter list was released. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the loss aggregate TFP from the misallocation of workers across jobs was substantial, on the order of 3 percent of GDP.
Keywords: Political Economy; Venezuela; Economic Outcomes; Political Repression
JEL Codes: N16; O0
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Voters identified as Chávez opponents (D72) | Earnings drop (E25) |
| Voters identified as Chávez opponents (D72) | Employment rate drop (J63) |
| Signing the third petition (Z00) | Economic repercussions (F69) |
| Political opposition (D72) | Adverse economic outcomes (F69) |
| Worker misallocation due to political discrimination (J79) | Loss in aggregate total factor productivity (TFP) (O49) |